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Freelance Programming Sites?
CarrotLord asks: "I have some small, fairly well-defined programming projects that I need done, but I don't have time to do them myself. So, I've been looking into sites like Get a Freelancer and ScriptLance. Does anybody have any experience of these types of sites? Specifically, I'd like to hear your recommendations and advice, as well as your experiences. My concerns include: getting very poor quality work; communication and language barriers and also losing control over the work that I've paid for -- if I'm paying for some work, I want it licensed on my own terms."
Unless this "coder" resides in the same juris-dick-tion as you do, he ain't going to be reined in to observing your conditions upon completion and delivery.
Stick to the locals, at least you have more business rights that way.
You're going to block ports to stop a developer from extracting code from your location?
Any developer worth his salt would have no problem overcoming any such restriction.
It the strictest sense, you may be correct. It will be harder to get a copy of the code. Harder in the sense that it may be harder to make a left turn by taking 3 rights, but in no way is it difficult.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
It all depends on how big the projects are. If you want something between notepad and say wordpad then you shouldn't have a problem. If you want something like more complicated (a project that will take more than a month) then it is fairly complicated and it will be easier if you are in the same room.
My Dad sells stuff on line and a few of his products are things that people have asked for that only cost $200 from a freelancer then he has sold about 20 copies and made the money back.
That being said his main product took about 6 months to make and other people keep on asking for resale rights (he does commission). He says no and they chuck a fit saying we'll just get a freelancer to make it and wipe you off the market. They get freelancers and say copy this. They always fail because 80% of the product is the little things that are done automatically to make it nice and easy to use.
Now there are also a couple of things to watch out for:
* Lots of freelancers don't care about copyright. They use other projects in your and your in other projects.
* Start of with a small contact and if your happy then get the same person to do the bigger one.
* Freelancers come and go. They might not be interested next time.
* Use an escrow service the first few times. It good for them and for you.
Why use some big, impersonal job aggregator, never even meeting the programmer in person, when you could just go down to a coffee shop and meet with a friend-of-a-friend? Keep the money local, and help build "the network." The network is how those who know what they are doing leverage the abilities of other skilled people. Massive aggregator sites break down the network and overly corporatize it, leading to impersonal interactions and lack of accountability.
In my experience, sites like RentACoder don't really work. I've only been there as a coder, not as an 'employer'.
When I had some spare time I'd sometimes bid on a project. I never actually got one though. The employers usually want a lot of work done for very little money.
I see a project and think about it. To do a real good job, would require about 10 hours. Max bid: $100. That's $10 an hour (7 euro?) BEFORE taxes. I'd make more working in a supermarket. In the end, you see someone getting this job for $30.
Either there are some people that just about work for free or, more likely, the end product is not quite the quality expected by the employer.
So my impression is, if you want the job done good, get more cash. If you're getting more cash anyway, you can just as well hire someone that's close to you.